Lanyard Tricks

Here’s a great website that teaches eight or nine different stitches – Lanyards.com. The videos are easy to follow, clearly filmed, with good verbal instructions.

M-ito learned the box stitch in about an hour then taught a friend two days later. The box stitch is a good one to start with. I remember lanyard from camp when I was a kid. It’s still the same thing and still pretty cool to do – very focusing, very zen. Over, under, over under. Wash on, wash off. Keep the lanyards in line. That and some finger dexterity is all you need. It sounds simple but does take practice. We bought some lanyard out in Greenport so city folks will have to look at Michaels Craft Store to get theirs. That’s where I’m getting my next batch. It’s been added to my bag of tricks and especially uyseful when waiting for dinner to be served.

One Hand Clapping

I took M-ito to work with me today. Mom-ita was working, teaching a consulting gig, and out all day. I had work that had to be done so I couldn’t take the day off. We walked to the express station – what is normally a fifteen minute walk – in half an hour. The trains were fast though, and instead of 11am I made it in by 10:15.

He sat in my office for almost three hours, reading a Pokemon Manga and playing games on my iPhone. He’s so good. He even waved, his small, shy, bent-elbow wave, to everyone I introduced him too. They smiled back at him.

We had lunch and walked about twenty blocks downtown to the comics store, Forbidden Planet. I had him avoid all the “adult” sections and the “monster” sections. He bought two ugly dolls with his allowed funds, eyeballing the USS Enterprise model and a Godzilla action figure.

On the R train home, both of us exhausted, nodding a little, I took out a book of Zen Koans I’d been reading (Zen Flesh, Zen Bones) and asked M-ito if he wanted me to read him some stories that were like puzzles.

He said, “Sure.”

I told him the story of the Zen Master who had a young student who wanted to the master to give him a koan to help him to study and learn. The master asked him if he knew the sound of two hands clapping and the student said, “Yes.” Then he asked him, “What’s the sound of one hand?” The student went back and forth over a year coming up with answers like, the wind, an owl hooting, the breath and each time the master said, “No. Come back when you have figured it out.”

Well… I only got to the first time the master asked, “What’s the sound of one hand clapping,” when M-ito interrupted me and said, “there is no sound.” My mouth hung open for a moment. Then I shut it and continued the story, ending at the same place my son had already been to, camped out at, and completed. It took the student a year. It took my son about three seconds.

Rush Hour Returns!

Just when I thought the game should go back into M-ito’s room and never be seen again, today I packed it in my bag of tricks and what do you know? M-ito asked to play it at the coffee shop where we had lunch. We played half a dozen times and had a blast, both of us playing the expert level and solving the puzzles together.

Ahhhhh…

Rush Hour

It came in like a spring wind. A small black playing board with plastic cars, trucks and busses on it – and an ice cream truck – for whom the whole purpose of the game was to get it unstuck from a traffic jam. The game was called Rush Hour and it had been months since M-ito brought it out of his room to play. What I liked about the game – a traffic jam puzzle - was that it was portable (ie: fit in my bag of tricks backpack), that I could play too (the expert level games where indeed challenging), and that, well, the game looked cool. For one week last year it was all M-ito played, everywhere we went. Then he’d had enough and moved on to another game. Rush Hour became obsolete. 

Yesterday I pulled it out, because M-ito had mentioned it while talking about iphone games and he reminded us how much he liked the Rush Hour game. Excited, I brought it to coffee this morning, on the last day of school, and two of M-ito’s friends enjoyed playing it while they waited with the adults for their party to start. I started giving them hints and then had to stop myself because they were enjoying themselves without me. After the festivities were over and we were again home, I asked M-ito if he wanted to play. 

“No,” was all he said.

“But,” I began.

“No, Dad-dito, I don’t like that game anymore.”

My mouth hung open and I caught some flies for a few moments. 

But I’m not done with the game yet, I said to myself. I still want to play.

The problem is I like games, a great quality for a Dad-dito to have. It means when Candyland comes out, I play. The same goes for Star Wars Monopoly, Operation, Zooreka, and Zooloretto. And I like all kinds of games, including card games and board games. I don’t mind losing to M-ito most of the time (I have to win every once in a while just to keep him honest), reading the instructions to new games, explaining the rules to him, and looking for new games he might (and I might) like. And M-ito likes games too – he loves them, but he usually loves a game for anywhere from one day to a few months. Then the love affair is over. And I’m left with a hankering to play a game without a partner. 

But I’m not done yet.

So it goes.

Wii Wars

Mom-ita plays a mean Wii. M-ito plays a mean Wii. I can hear them battling through five levels of animated storm troopers, alien cantinas and pod-racers. This is what it sounds like.

“Go over here, Mom-ita – follow me.”

“You have to wait for me.”

“Follow me, Mom-ita, I know what to do here.”

“M-ito, you have to wait for me.”

“Follow me.”

Or…

“Mom-ita, you have to wait for me.”

“I know what to do here so you follow me.”

“Mom-ita!”

“M-ito, sometimes you have to follow. That’s what playing together is all about.”

I step over to see them from the kitchen. I’ve just about finished the dishes. They are both sitting there, nonchucks in one hand and control wand in the other. Their eyes are glued to the TV screen which is filled with flying projectiles, coins and red hearts.

“Get the heart! Get the heart!” M-ito says.

“I’m trying to but you keep moving away from it and I can’t get to it.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got it.”

I play sometimes with M-ito but I’m not a big fan of electronic games. I was when I was a kid and adolescent. I spent a lot of quarters on Pong and Space Invaders, Galaga, Asteroids, and Defender. But I also got lost in them and disappeared while I played for hours on end. I get worried my son will do the same. He has had a different life than me so he doesn’t have the same need to disappear that I had at that age, but I get worried never-the-less.

Back on Tatooine, Mom-ita has put her controls down and has crossed her arms, sitting back on the couch, chin tucked, brow furrowed.

“Mom-ita, what are you doing?” M-ito says as he continues to blast away at furniture and creatures, gaining coins and hearts and points.

“No,” Mom-ita says.

“I’m sorry,” says M-ito. “I said I’m sorry.”

Mom-ita picks up the controls and leans forward.

“I can do this part,” she says and M-ito nods, his mouth hanging a little open.

I return to the dishes, shaking my head. Mom-ita says she wants to practice with me at night after M-ito is asleep. She says this in front of M-ito as a joke, but also to let him know how good he is. But… I don’t think she’s kidding.

Wordplay

We’re at our favorite coffee shop, eating lunch and playing a word game called Crossword Dice (a game I bought from Levenger that has been around since 1948 but which has been recently updated in design – see link). I’ve got my latte and M-ito has rolled the seven dice with letters on them. He’s making words. He spells F – O – C and says outloud, “Foc! I spelled Foc!” He smiles at me with a big gap in his front teeth staring back at me. He pronounces the “c” with a hard “k” sound.

I put a finger to my lips quickly and say, “Shhh.”

“What’s wrong,” he asks. “Foc’s a word. Isn’t it? Foc?” He’s smiling, enjoying the word he’s found.

“Just, don’t say that word out loud,” I say, looking around to see if anyone has heard us.

“Foc?”

“Yesssss! Now stop saying it.”

“Why?”

“Because, because, because it’s a bad word.”

“What’s it mean?”

“It’s a curse, okay? So don’t say it anymore.” Now I’m smiling at the people sitting next to us. I nod and look back at M-ito. “Okay?” 

“Okay,” he says, and shrugs.

I pick up the seven dice and roll them so I can play. “My turn,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief. 

Sometimes you don’t see ‘em coming.

Know Your Pokeman

When Star Wars was in (which it was for the last six months) M-ito knew all of the character’s names, each of the episodes story lines from beginning to end (each that we allowed him to watch) which is what comes from watching them 1 or 2 dozen times each, and had memorized all the key lines for major and minor characters. He also loves Legos and his knowledge of each of the models he built added to his reference base. He carried the Legos characters into school each day so they could play with them together. He had, amongst his peers, a mastery of the subject and so, on the playground during recess, he was in with the boys.

The shift to playing more with boys occurred with the rise of Star Wars when school started back in September. Then about a week or two ago – we’re not sure exactly how long but it’s about that long – a change occurred. Pokeman took over and M-ito’s knowledge base of Pokeman is very very low.

The girls are, “playing games I don’t want to play,” he told us when we asked.

The boys – some of whom have older brothers who were weened on Pokeman – had mastery. They didn’t allow M-ito to play with them. “You don’t know them (the characters) well enough so you can’t play,” they said to him. My son is smart and is a leader in his class. For the first time with this group he found himself outside of the social circle. He’s been playing by himself all week during what used to be his favorite subject – recess. We could tell, he was crushed.

Mom-ita, of course figured this out quickly and came up with a solution. She brought him to ToyRus today and they bought some Pokeman action figures. They came home and M-ito showed me Chatot and Palkia and I could see his face light up. The three of us looked on the internet for Pokeman resources and Mom-ita found a site with descriptions of each of the characters he had bought. In case you didn’t know there is a collectible card game a collectible figure game, and over ten years of gaming history to wade through. It was not easy to find, but Mom-ita persisted.

M-ito now knows each of his character’s type, and special powers, size, weight, and height. Mom-ita also made sure our son bought one character that he knew no other boy had. He will go into school tomorrow with knowledge, and power, and a backpack full of Pokeman action figures. My guess is the water dragon Palkia will be in the mix.  The boys who played with him when they were all into Star Wars must now let him in to the land of Pokeman. The look on my sons face is heartbreaking.

I never would have figured out how to help him. I was stuck unable to see why anyone would not want to play with my son. I just couldn’t get past that. My wife is amazing. To her it’s not rocket science. It’s simply knowing our son.

Toys and Far Flung Adventures – Books to Read to a 6-year Old

M-itos’ three favorite books (these are books I read aloud to him, but he followed along as I read asking “where are you?” every once in a while just to make sure where we were on the page – and they all have lots of wonderful pen and ink illustrations):

Far Flung Adventures: Fergus Crane, by Riddell and Stewart (A wonderfully inventive  book about a boy whose father dissapeared on an adventure a long time ago and whose mother makes pastries at a bakery. It involves all kinds of mechanical inventions, a long lost uncle, three talking penguins named Bill, Finn and Jackson, and the Fatefull Voyage Trading Company. Great read-alone also for the 7-9 age. There are three more books in the series, Corby Flood – we’re reading now and M-ito loves it so far – this one with a girl protagonist! And Hugo Pepper. These authors also wrote a terrific fantasy series called The Edge Chronicles – but that’s really for older kids.)

Toys Go Out, by Emily Jenkins (Another great book about a little girl’s three favorite toys, a stuffed manta ray, a plastic ball, and a stuffed buffalo and their adventures with the girls other toys and household items. It has very funny stories and lovable characters. M-ito actually said this book beat out Star Wars as his favorite story.)

Toy Dance Party, by Emily Jenkins (Part II with a sad and sweet theme of growing up as the girl gets older and, though she still loves her three favorite toys, starts to leave them behind. It may not sound like it but there were laugh-out-loud parts here just as in the first book Toys Go Out. It gave us great things to talk about when were finished.)

Make-and-Mend Sunday

“What do I do when I’m not doing legos?” M-ito asks. He’s lying in bed, trying to keep his eyes open and failing, though giving it his all. Mom-ita is on one side and I’m on the other. We’re talking about our make-and-mend day – our Sunday. With snow outside (and me disappointed not to go sledding) we stayed in all day. M-ito had a bit of a cold so we decided to play it safe and do no-thing. This entailed the following some-things (not particularly in any order):

• Working on the “Death Star” lego model that his pop-pop bought him as the big christmas gift of the year. This is an over 3,000 piece model that is taking up a whole corner of our living room as he rummages through the pieces (and constantly asks us to help him find a piece) and the 200 page instruction manual. We figure it ought to take him a good two weeks to finish.
• Watching Animal Planet.
• Wrestling and jumping on the bed.
• Me reading him four chapters of Far-Flung Adventures: of Fergus Crane by Stewart and Riddell (a great read-to and read-along with book for a 6-year old with spectacular pen and ink drawings on most pages).
• Mom-ita reading him Max’s Words by Banks and Kulikov (a terrific picture book about the power of words and story telling).
• Watching the gerbils as I cleaned their cages (the two mommies fought so they’re now in two separate tanks of two mother-daughter pairs) and as they watched him play with his Star Wars lego characters.
• Watching the second half of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace (we’d watched the first part earlier in the week).
• Watching the Secrets of the Furious Five (a sequel to Kung Fu Panda that we got as a boxed set over the holidays) two times along with learning how to draw Po, checking our Chinese new years and zodiac animals (M-ito is a horse, Mom-ita a tiger and yours truly… an Ox), watching different styles of kung fu based on the animals in the movie – moves modeled by kids, and finally each of us taking a quiz that determined which style of kung fu was most suited to us (M-ito the serpent, Mom-ita and me the crane). The movie, by the way was short at 45 minutes but really excellent and quite a good surprise. It is Po telling five stories, one about each of the furious five and a lesson each learned in order to become a master (courage, patience, etc…). 
• Taking a shower and had a huge meltdown (M-ito, not me this time).
• Eating breakfast and linner (lunch and dinner combined).
• Playing with his Didj (that’s for another column – ugh).

“What do I do when I’m not doing legos?” he asks again, cocking his head to the side, one eye closing. Mom-ita and I list what we remember of the day.

“Oh yeah,” he says and lays his head down on his pillow, Puffy the Puffin, his new favorite stuffed animal, close by his side.

Games for 6-year olds

Here’s M-ito’s list of most played with toys over the last month. The key word here is LEGO, LEGO, LEGO. When I was growing up we had model airplanes, ships and tanks. Children today have LEGOs. And they are better. Let’s face it, there’s no glue (and subsequently no glue sniffing), no razor to trim the flash and therefore no stitches from cuts, no parts that don’t exactly fit together, no waiting for the glue to dry before putting the next piece on, no painting the pieces when you’re done. What you get with LEGOs is an incredibly complex model with a ton of pieces, that works like a giant puzzle with directions that are fully visual (no reading required) and that can be played with when you’re done. The pieces snap together perfectly and they look very, very cool in their realistic colors and stick-on decals. My job is to help find the pieces for M-ito that he can’t find for himself. He puts all the pieces together and won’t allow me to help with that at all. Sometimes he’ll ask me to see what’s wrong if he thinks he’s made a mistake but that’s it. He’s even figured out that if you open only one bag at a time – and the bag that is numbered to go with the pieces he’s working on – it’s easier to find the right pieces. We did all the Aqua Raiders sets by opening all the bags at once and mixing them together. Not easy for Daddito to find the smaller pieces with his failing eyesight. Still these are great things to do with your kids. I heard a father tell another parent this when he was asked about the bionicle he was buying. “We do them together,” he said. How cool is that? M-ito can work on the more complex sets for hours. His favorites to date include:

• Aqua Raiders
• Star Wars
• Indiana Jones
• Bionicles
• All of the Creator 3 in 1 models (you take the model apart and create two others with the same pieces)
• Mars Mission
• Castle

What’s the downside? Many of the sets are war-like and have guns, swords, knives, etc… So when we play nobody ever gets killed – they get knocked out and always come back to fight again. It’s a small victory over violence at playtime but it’s all I’ve got.

M-ito’s other top six favorite games are (in no particular order):

• There’s a Moose in the House (excellent card game from my favorite game company Gamewright Games)
• Duck Duck Bruce (another excellent card game from Gamewright)
• Dino-opoly (the old favorite for the dinosaur set)
• Zooreka (a great game about building your own zoo from Cranium Games)
• Slamwich (another game from Gamewright about making a sandwich!)
• Stack (a stacking dice game that’s very colorful and easy to carry from Talicor Inc.)

We’ve also added baseball mitts (I got one too) – though a knock on the head with a spongy version of a baseball has caused a small set-back, a volleyball, a handball, and a fishing pole (two attempts to fish and no luck so far but lots of fun). What’s sad is that some of the old favorites like a ton of Little People sets and figures have left to go on to other children. Sad and beautiful, both at the same time – of course.